CIVIL
DEFENSE: THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION: United States. 1969-1974.The Nixon administration saw significant changes in focus and
direction for civil defense efforts but did not halt the downward slide of
actual capability to protect the population.Initial Presidential actions seemed to reflect an interest in civil
defense.President Nixon ordered a
study of the shelter system to assess how casualties could be minimized in the
event of nuclear war and signed Executive Order 11490 requesting Federal agencies
to plan new building construction, including cases in which Federal grants or
loans were being used, to provide shelter capabilities to protect the
population.However, in February 1970,
Secretary of Defense Laird stated to the House Armed Services Committee that
the Administration intended to propose no major changes in civil defense
programs, in part because of an ongoing study of civil defense issues by the
Office of Emergency Preparedness.Shortly thereafter, Office of Civil Defense Director John E. Davis
submitted the lowest budget request ever submitted to Congress - $73.8 million.

Reflecting
budget realities, Director Davis announced a major new direction for civil
defense in his Fiscal Year 1971 Annual Report – the start of the evolution
of the concept of dual use.This
approach acknowledged the importance of peacetime emergency response and
suggested that the development of local capabilities to respond to disasters in
peace contributed to civil defense in war.On the face of it, this was a sensible, and undoubtedly popular, change
of direction, and a change that in the long view may have saved civil defense
programs by providing them a way to legitimately contribute to meeting state
and local government priorities.However, it ensured that national defense concerns would eventually
become secondary to disaster response and set-up the basis for internal program
conflicts that continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In
June 1970 the Office of Emergency Preparedness completed its study of the civil
defense program and forwarded it to the National Security Council, where it was
designated National Security Study Memorandum No. 57 (NSSM 57).This report was classified, but the commonly
held perception was that the study identified a full range of civil defense
options, including some that would have required significant expenditures.The course selected was embodied in National
Security Decision Memorandum No. 184 (NSDM 184), which stressed the need for
increased use of dual-use plans and procedures in the context of existing
legislative and budgetary authority.

In
early 1971 the Fitzhugh blue ribbon panel on the defense establishment
recommended the reorganization of civil defense programs with the establishment
of a separate agency within the Department of Defense reporting to the
Secretary of Defense.On May 5, 1972
the Office of Civil Defense was disestablished and responsibility for civil
defense transferred to the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (see Civil Defense and Emergency
Management Organizational History).Based on NSDM 184, the new agency immediately implemented dual-use.In this process the previous key elements of
the civil defense shelter program were significantly downsized.The program to mark and stock shelters was
relegated to implementation during the increased tension of a crisis.At the same time Defense Civil Preparedness
Agency support for the Federal Engineering Survey to identify shelter spaces
shifted to advocacy of state sponsored State Engineer Support Groups as the
primary survey agents.

The
Defense Civil Preparedness Agency initiated a second major shift in focus
during 1972, from sheltering to evacuation planning for areas that were
identified as high risk in a risk analysis process.The evacuation process, to be implemented during crisis to
disperse people from major cities prior to any attack on the United States,
differed little from crisis relocation planning in previous administrations,
even though efforts were made to draw a distinction based on the point in time
in which evacuation would commence.This change to evacuation came at a time when the General Accounting
Office had just published an October 1971 report that concluded sheltering
offered the potential to save millions of lives during an attack, even given
increased numbers of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

During
the remaining years of the Nixon administration there was little executive
interest in civil defense programs.Appropriations for dual use continued to rise, and funding for shelter
programs decreased, within a budget appropriation that averaged approximately
$80 million per year.With rising
inflation, this represented an annual decrease in spending power for all
programs, and the funds available for national security oriented civil defense,
as opposed to natural disaster, permitted only the most rudimentary
program.The fallout shelter system
started to decay, the last shelter supplies from the stockpiles of the 1960s
were expended, the shelter survey program was reduced to a minimal level of
effort, warning and communications systems could not be purchased, and agency
staffing levels were reduced each year.

The
most obvious explanation for this decay is the signing of the Strategic Arms
Limitation Treaty (SALT I).The
centerpiece of this treaty was the agreement to limit deployment of
anti-ballistic missile systems, enshrining the doctrine of mutually assured
destruction.By limiting ballistic
missile defenses, both sides were perceived to be agreeing that they would take
no steps to limit the other side’s ability to cause catastrophic damage in
retaliation to a first strike.In this
environment an effective civil defense system might have been seen by one side
or the other as reducing the level of vulnerability.The Nixon Administration appears to have believed that civil
defense was destabilizing to mutual cooperation in the Strategic Arms Limitation
process and to a doctrine that accepted hostage populations.